Mrs Dalrymple, returning from her walk, was met by a request that she would at once go to Miss Laurence’s room. She felt a little startled.
“What is the matter? Miss Laurence is not ill, surely?” she said to her maid, who was watching for her with Eugenia’s message.
The young woman, a comparative stranger, answered that she did not know; she had not thought Miss Laurence looking very well when she came in, but she had not complained. Eugenia’s face, however, confirmed her friend’s fears.
“You are ill, my dear child,” she exclaimed at once. “Have you got cold again, do you think? You were looking so well this morning.”
“I am not ill,—truly I am not,” replied Eugenia. “But, dear Mrs Dalrymple, I wanted to see you as soon as you came in, to ask you to be so very, very kind as to let me go home at once,—to-day if possible.”
“Go home to-day! My dear Eugenia, it is out of the question. You must be ill,” said Mrs Dalrymple, considerably perplexed, and half-inclined to think the girl’s brain was affected.
“No, no; it isn’t that. Oh, Mrs Dalrymple, I can’t bear to tell you! I have never spoken of it to any one,—only to one person at least,” she said, correcting herself, as the remembrance of her conversations with Gerald returned to her mind. “But I am sure I can trust you, and you will understand. It is—it is because Captain Chancellor is here that I want to go.”
“My poor child!” said Mrs Dalrymple, very tenderly, drawing Eugenia nearer her as she spoke; and though she said no more, the girl saw how mistaken she had been in imagining that no one had guessed her secret, and a painful flush of shame rose to her brow at the thought.
Then, after a moment’s pause, her friend spoke again.
“You are sure of it?” she inquired. “You are sure that he is here,—actually here? May you not have made, some mistake?”